"Even pledge drives can't repel me / Me and NPR are like PB and Jelly," or, THE NPR POLL TO END ALL NPR POLLS

Boring pick, but ATC for me. I really do think their news division is tops.

"Marketplace" is a PRI show, not NPR, isn't it?

I can't stand the experience of listening to Terry Gross, whose handlers probably disconnect and put her in the broom closet after each segment; it explains her cluelessness re popular rage, trends, etc.

Yeah, I included a bunch of PRI/APM shows, but the thought of doing a poll with ATC or Morning Edition but not TAL or (bleh) APHC (LOL NPR alphabet soup) seemed kind of wrong, imo.

Also did not want to upset the Kai Ryssdal fans on the board.

radiolab

I have a love-hate reaction to Marketplace -- well produced, well reported, but capitalism is Satan's cock and we're all getting skullfucked etc etc blah blah

It helps to know the size of Satan's pipi, ya know?

hahaha yeah

Robert Siegel is the voice accompanying me on my drive home from work.

RADIOLAB

I just recently caught on, but now Sundays are synonymous with a Radiolab podcast or two.

Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is frequently hilarious, so is Says You; Terry Gross is insufferable and Ira Glass's life makes me want to barf.

other

Don't really understand all the TAL hate, even if it is pretty hit or miss.

hannity for me! actually i listen to podcasts to and fro work (alot of these are npr though). tal over radiolab mainly due to radiolab only being monthly, tal having so many more episodes in the bank, having a great app etc. shoutout to marketplace. contempt for ppl who use car talk of all shows to bash npr. deep deep contempt for terry gross. ambivalent feelings but i still listen award to science friday - plz stop taking calls from listeners or at least screen the fuck out of them. also listen to studio 360 which could be better but is much more tolerable than any other instance of npr encounters pop culture i can think of. have never listened to don't wait plz kill me, but my sister's a fan.

what TAL h8?

Ira Glass's life makes me want to barf.

― shook mod (remy bean), Sunday, August 28, 2011

oh this izzit

and Ira Glass's life makes me want to barf.

a disappointing, fluff, scattershot radiolab is so much more annoying than a disappointing, fluff, scattershot tal ime.

lol, yes, that and I initially thought Leeeee was blehing TAL, but then I reread the post correctly

also the brief interim of nancy updike hosted tal's gave me new, major appreciation for ira glass.

can't remember the name of wnyc morning talk radio show that i had pitched to me as 'morning edition x howard stern' and kinda was in that it did what morning edition does well about as well as howard stern and did what howard stern does well about as well as morning edition.

I mostly listen to Morning Edition. I like On the Media, and sometimes Studio 360 too. (I have no idea which of these are NPR or PRI, and don't care.)

Terry Gross is a pill, haven't listened to her in years.

xpost: the takeaway?

here's some diversity of opinion: radiolab is fucking torture. voting ATC but i listen to morning edition more often these days

coleman is it the banter, the ott production, the ott focus on neurology (imo), que?

I'd have to vote Morning Edition on frequency and volume, it's a constant. There's still something really nice about hearing the news in the morning, done well, not punctuated by people screaming at you to buy shit. (All those sponsorship announcements are more like, murmuring at you to buy shit.) I like TAL and Radiolab both fine, they can both annoy me but they have a lot of good stories. The Radiolab report on Centralia, Pa., was pretty great.

Wait, Wait is lovable. Car Talk I still listen to even though I don't know why I do. On the Media is good. That should be on the list.

also the brief interim of nancy updike hosted tal's gave me new, major appreciation for ira glass.

Awww I like Nancy Updike.

Other. I only listen to How To Do Everything.

The shine's kind of fallen off Radiolab since in the last ~1 yr they've become TAL-lite with all these human interest stories and I'm all, SCIENCE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO HAVE EMOTIONS JUST GIMME YOUR BRAND OF SQUISHY SCIENCE. I did like a recent podcast of theirs though that recounted a woman who had an allergic reaction to anti-nausea medication, because I experienced the exact same thing.

I'm probably leaning WWDTM, as that's the only one I still keep up with regularly nowadays (outside of the 15 minutes of Morning Edition/ATC/Marketplace that I hear on my commutes home).

xpost b-b-b-but that's a podcast!

i like her too! the 'will they know me back home' one was fantastic. she just suddenly felt very dry in that npr fashion. that tal is a radio version of a tv newsmagazine just seemed too apparent at that moment. it could be i'm a sexist asshole, when the planet money guys take over tal glass is barely there and i'm fine with it.

Also, the supposed ILX TAL hate is squarely taken up by Fresh Air, clearly.

i'm generally meh on the human interest stories w/ the slightest science hook like 'o btw dude had prorosopagnosia' also but at the same time pretty often those stories (like the one where dude has prosopagnosia) can have me on the verge of pulling my car over so i can breakdown in tears.

ilx tell me about don't wait plz kill me.

re: Radiolab, even when they put a face on prosopagnosia (geddit?) I'm fine with it, it's when they don't even bring science into their stories that I'm annoyed/disappointed, because they're just doing TAL and TAL does TAL better.

WWDTM is funny! It's exactly the kind of humor you'd expect out of NPR, the self-deprecating self-referential middle-class hipsterish stuff on current affairs, which is lovely or awful depending on your tastes, but some of their panelists slay me (e.g. Adam Felber).

I am relieved to see no love for Car Talk, as of yet. This hosts of this show became the walking dead about 15 years ago.

None of these choices own my strong alliegance, but I listen to most of them from time to time while flipping around the non-commercial end of my radio dial (where I spend 99% of my radio time). If I had to choose, I'd go with Morning Edition, even though I rarely am listening to radio when it is on. Marketplace would be my runner-up.

WWDTM is unamusing.

WWDTM's host is like a slightly upgraded version of Art Linkletter, with extra added irony. I'm pretty sure the ilx hivemind has no idea who Art Linkletter was.

his daughter could fly iirc

what's the thread w/ 'stuff that used to be impossible to find/see that now you can just click on youtube and see'?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vtYFMBD8-8

Either Marketplace or TAL -- Marketplace bc Kai has my favorite voice on the radio, and TAL bc Ira Glass has lovely hands

On the Media

as ex-anchor of hard copy, I want to see Barry Nolan challenge ex-inside-edition anchor Bill O'Reilly to a trivia-off and destroy him with his mutant arcana recall.

I am relieved to see no love for Car Talk, as of yet.

I voted for it even though I haven't listened to it in years. I thought we were voting on career value, not current quality: Car Talk is the only thing that has ever made me laugh out loud on NPR ever and for that it gets my vote. No, wait, one time Mike Birbiglia said something that made me laugh on TAL, but then they kept bringing him back and back and he never said anything that funny again. So: Car Talk.

will listen to chunks of ATC, morning edition, marketplace during car commutes if i'm not listening to music. the npr affiliates in LA have some decent local programming that i'll listen to if i'm in the mood. hate terry gross. also hate ira glass but occasionally on a weekend i'll be driving somewhere and get sucked in if it's a good show. would never willingly listen to the other non-news programs as the limited exposure i've had has been torture.

fwiw the people I know at my local affiliate are all cool. I'm sure that depends on the station manager, but I think there are a lot of good people scattered around the whole NPR system.

(I know that's not relevant to the poll, I just think the affiliates get undervalued in terms of what makes NPR work. My donation is as much or more to support the local station as to pay for the syndicated stuff.)

e.g.: only jazz programming in Knoxville. Local DJs, 90 minutes each night after ATC.

I haven't been able to listen to NPR national shows at all for like 5 years plus, thanks to anxiety issues making me hate the news and NPR's propensity for broadcasting republican horseshit unchallenged.

I lived for this stuff during the undergrad years and beyond, tho, from 94 to 04 or so

xpost b-b-b-but that's a podcast!

Huh, I'm not sure I realized until now that Radiolab was broadcast on the radio. I guess the name should've been a tip-off.

Should it matter? I never turn on a radio, it's just not convenient for the consumption of media.

All Things Considered = pretty good news show, though i've never really warmed up to michele norris.
Car Talk = my vote, joy personified, plus they know wtf they're talking about always which is about the only place in all media where this can be said
Fresh Air = sucks
Le Show = never heard
Marketplace = yeah yeah neoliberalism etc, really informative, love the weird "sloan" guy they talk to every now and again, plus robert reich every other day is good and david frum every other other day is not half semi-bad these days.
Morning Edition = sometimes in the morning i just don't want to hear people talking, idk
A Prairie Home Companion = i can't even think straight about this shit anymore, lived here too long, don't enjoy.
Radioloab = never heard
Says You = wha?
Talk of the Nation = never hear this
This American Life = idk, so many classics, even when i manage to hear a recent segment it pulls me in still, so much irritating about it tho it's true.
Wait Wait Don't Tell Me = not even slightly chuckle with your parents funny. goddam dire shit.
Weekend Edition = never hear this

hard to believe talk of the nation is still going, was good when ray suarez (sp?) hosted it like 15 years ago or whenver

radiolab is a lot of whats irritating about tal but only a very little bit less good

ilx posters say the darndest things.

Wait Wait Don't Tell Me = not even slightly chuckle with your parents funny. goddam dire shit.

Are you serious? I think it's frequently v. funny.

FWIW I like a lot of the stories on TAL, I just hate Glass & co.'s sermonizing/moralizing/rhetorical questioning style in the interstitials i.e. "but what did it mean? could this really be a pattern in her life? she'd dated men like this before.... or had she? was the connection between Jason and Todd one she wanted to see that maybe wasn't there? The more she looked at it, the less sure she became. We've all been there –– falling into that paranoia, ceding control to suspicion. It's a bad feeling. But what did she do with it? Find out more in Part II of our show today: Dating the Disabled."

I should add some periods or line breaks in there for the weird little caesuras Ira Glass employs:

Find out more
in Part II
of our show. Today.

Dating.

the.

Disabled.

See, the way you wrote that is much funnier than anything I've ever heard on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me.

I dunno. It's goofy dad humor. I guess I like that.

i dont see how you can love the dadjokeiness of car talk and not have a place in your heart for wait wait. carl kasell goes ham on that shit. and tom bodett's a frequent guest! so that should settle the matter.

aphc i havent listened to in years, but lake wobegon was the funniest thing in the world to me when i was 10 y/o. the rest of the show was boring/bewildering in the extreme, but i'll never hate on wobes

tal does some great stories but i dont really care for the house style, incl. glass

lol @ "wobes"

maybe after keillor dies they'll try to do a 'street' spinoff called Tha WOBE

lol remy. carrie bradshaw for indie kidz

Also, I don't remember who it was on the board that pointed this out, but sometimes it sounds like Ira Glass should be hosting This American Lisp.

Listening to Car Talk's hosts as they natter inanely, guffaw and whinny

^^^ yeah, this. You either love this show or you don't, I think. If only these guys were 1/1000th as funny as all of their laughing at each other's unfunniness. Their voices are truly nails-on-chalkboard to me.

Car Talk is def. a favorite

i dont see how you can love the dadjokeiness of car talk and not have a place in your heart for wait wait.

was totally gonna say this! car talk love and all of a sudden wwdtm is omg 2 corny make it stop, gtfo (plenty of other reasons to not actually listen to wwdtm, mine's paula poundstone). first they came for the yuppies...

used to think pat morrison was kinda lame, but her kpcc show is usually good

yeah she came off really stern/humorless and to be avoided for a good long while but her personality is easier to suss out over time, she prepares very well and knows how to bring pointed questions to bear within the flow of her guest's bs, just a really solid newsperson + facilitator.

plenty of other reasons to not actually listen to wwdtm, mine's paula poundstone

haha this is who i was hearing in my head. and mo rocca. and the host. but yeah carl kassell is worth it

even the host is plenty witty for the show imo. mo rocca though, man, what're do you gonna do

Mo NONONOcca.

the Kojo Nnamdi show (from dc) is the best. I also like 'here and now,' 'on point' and 'news and notes.'

dislike pretty much everything on our local NPR on saturdays: car talk, wait wait.. special hate for 'the splendid table.' 'wait wait' is just not funny at all to me. TAL stories are interesting but I wish nearly everyone on it didn't have that voice. seems like most of the people they interview have it as well.

Hahah why did I start this poll I knew it was going to be full up of you guys complaining about TAL, WWDTM, Fresh Air. White liberals you so predictable!

I live for Jonathan Schwartz Saturday and Sunday afternoons on WNYC (American songbook, showtunes, Sinatra).

lol i was going to bring up "the splendid table" as THE WORST npr show in a crowded field of weekend dreck

I've only listened to the Splendid Table a couple of times on car trips -- what is it that makes it so bad?

I've heard – conversationally, and a number of times – that Garrison Keillor is a wife-beater. But I'm unable to find evidence of this anywhere. Is it, in fact, a lie? Does anybody else know about this?

there was this old gossip site in the early 2000s that had an entry on him and it said he was into bondage

Mmm yes hello I am Garrison Keillor.

heard WireTap on Michigan Public Radio driving home on Saturday, it made me laugh. The guy sounds a bit too much like David Sedaris tho. ***

Car Talk is the pinnacle of automobile themed radio shows. ****

Really got into a Prairie Home Companion when I was driving a delivery van way out in the sticks. Seemed like the thing to listen to in the middle of nowhere. Highlight was hearing Texas Terry and his Fiddle-de-dee Fiddlers Four for the first time. Will not listen to it anymore. **

glad to see sound opinions is not an option on this poll

"Says You = wha?"
this is a quiz show much like "wait wait" but the questions are freakishly hard and generally about words, word meanings.
one of the team captains, Barry Nolan, has a Ken Jennings-like command of the material.

heard WireTap on Michigan Public Radio driving home on Saturday, it made me laugh. The guy sounds a bit too much like David Sedaris tho. ***

In defense of Terry Gross, would rather listen to her dispense car advice than Tom & Ray.

"well, um, gee, why do you think your engine sounds like that? let's talk more about the time your father died in a hideous car crash. how did that make you feel? do you think it had any impact on your transmission?"

Says You sounds kinda cool, i should try to find some old streams or something

my npr station plays As It Happens late at night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjTnwmHbwDc

always feel this

I like car talk, it reminds me of BBC merseyside on visits to Liverpool whilst growing up; always seemed to consist of people phoning in talking gibberish and the hosts laughing about it.

Love the quiz show part of WWDTM, but at least 85% of the punchlines in that show are flaaaaaat.

xpost, every time the As It Happens theme comes on, I air-flute.
I love that the theme is called "Curried Soul"...because nothing is spicier or more soulful than a Canadian current events talk show?

more moe koffman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ou-jZk6ZDg

All Things Considered - Still a consistently good show
Car Talk - For MOR, they're funny and occasionally helpful
Fresh Air - Gross' breadth of subjects is comendable. Her inability to see past her nose can be really offputting
Le Show - Occasionally brilliant, often dull and longwinded
Marketplace - Fascinating since it's not the WSJ
Morning Edition - Every morning since I cannot abide TV before 10AM (unless it's sports)
A Prairie Home Companion - I haven't listened in years. I used to make my French ex-wife listen to it as a way to understand a certain kind of fly-over America
Radioloab - I don't remember
Says You - Funny enough in a stupid panel format
Talk of the Nation - Haven't listened in ages but I remember it mostly as ppl talking past each other
This American Life - Occasionally brilliant, sometimes dull, sometimes unlistenable
Wait Wait Don't Tell Me - For Kassel alone... Nah, it can be funny.
Weekend Edition - I like it 'cause it's a weekly wrap-up that doesn't have to pay as much attention to the 24/7 aspect of news
other - Not sure if it's NPR, but I love 'Fascinatin' Rhythm'.

I didn't used to have or watch much TV so I listened to a lot of NPR and later I used to drive a lot and listen to NPR. Nowadays, it's mostly Morning Edition and those times I'm at home on the weekend cleaning or whatever, where I can't just veg in front of the TV.

'american routes' sounds really hateable on paper but i've always liked the music, funny enough

Weekend Edition does have Will Shortz on to do those weekly puzzles, for you xword nerds.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Write-in for Diane Rehm, goddamit.

Terry Gross is infuriating because she has the best guests but she's so terrible.
Morning Edition and Marketplace are good for morning driving, but I feel weird voting for "solid but unremarkable current events"
This American Life and Radiolab are nice if I flip to NPR and something interesting is on, but I never seek them out
hate hate hate Prairie Home Companion (not even Robert Altman and Lindsay Lohan could make that shit bearable) and WWDT

Prairie Home Companion = Homer Simpson banging on the tv yelling "Be more funny!" is pretty much how I feel about this show. Everyone's laughing like hyenas and I don't know why.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I can see I need to leave NPR off for the rest of the weekend if I don't want 24-7 motherfuckfucking 9/11.

^^^that was all media outlets last weekend! not fair to single out npr.

morbs pissed he didn't get his frank deford this week

This interview with Corin is like a some kind of NPR wet dream for me: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/21/pm-the-musicians-life-in-down-economy/